Game On!

Jan 5 How to Encourage Roleplaying

Bloggers Roundtable of DOOM!

Lex Starwalker asked a group of Cypher System bloggers to discuss various topics in roleplaying games. He asked James August Walls, Marc Plourde, Scott Robinson, and me, to all address the same roleplaying topics. Lex himself would chime in as well. For January, we all get to respond to the following question:

"How would you, as GM, encourage roleplaying in a player who doesn't roleplay as much as you'd like, whether it's roleplaying with NPCs, being more descriptive in combat, or referring to themselves in the third person? If you want to take the roleplaying at your table to the next level, how do you get your players on board?

Before I start pontificating on my own ideas, I thought I'd share what my players said when I asked them the same question:

Leslie saidI think there are two things that made me feel comfortable testing the role playing waters - and here role playing means exactly that, playing the role of a character vs. playing the RPG game (which I've done for years).

First, having other players that do it really helps. This group made role playing the characters the norm. This created positive pressure without me feeling like "I had to" in order to enjoy the session. Its the best kind of peer pressure.

The GM did a great job of creating "space" at the table for characters to be played. It was rewarded not only socially, but mechanically in the game through incentives that were meaningful, but not critical to me being successful as a player.

Matthew (who has just started GMing Numenera) said Learn what each player finds motivating for playing in character, and what takes them out of it. Then you can play to various strengths and avoid those detractors. Does a player find the grind of dungeon crawling boring? Does counting and calculating costs to perform actions boggle them and take them out of character? Does a player withdraw when their skillset isn't useful for the game? Add specific moments that are personal for each character, to bring someone back into character.

After my all of one day GMing, I've noticed that different characters are more interested in certain subplots than others, and I'll work to include those characters more into the subplots they like.

James (who is also an Edge of the Empire GM) saidBe an encouraging GM. That is, a good GM never says "no" or "you're wrong" to a player. If you want roleplaying and creativity from your players, you encourage them to make things up, and if those ideas aren't quite up to snuff, you roll your own creativity into it and help the player make their idea better... even if you're totally going to murder them all later anyway. :-)

I had my players posing as repair workers on a ship they were thinking about stealing. They learned that the ship had a backup control center hidden off the bridge, and they'd need to find and disable it before they could steal the ship. One player was having a hard time getting into the RP aspects as she searched for clues as to where it might be, and I kept encouraging her to just roleplay any idea she wanted for how she'd find the hidden location. Finally she went with "I see a big red line on the floor going down the hallway from the bridge into a particular room."

Now, obviously, this isn't the most "plausible" way to find a secret bridge, but I ran with it, and basically "covered" for the idea. "Ah yes," I said, "with your thermal goggles down, you see a red glow, highlighting a suspiciously warm series of deck plates leading to an otherwise innocuous looking cabin. It seems a large number of energy conduits are routing from the bridge to here."

Bottom line, there should be no bad ideas.

Nicole (who also GMs from time to time) saidIf you hope for your players to rp, then rp your NPCs as well! Hardly a player can resist to answer in character, when an NPC addresses them in first-person speech, modified voice, mannerisms of shaking the head and an obvious lisp.

Writing a gaming blog is like GMing. Just listen to your players. The big stuff having been said, I'll just add a few ideas:

For me system matters. Highly crunchy rpgs with minimal support for storytelling engage the part of my brain that used to do computer programming all day. I find myself thinking about rules, tables, and numbers. I find it much easier to roleplay as a player and as a GM in more storytelling focused rpgs, such as Numenera. As someone whose played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, I'm very happy to see games like 13th Age, Dungeon World, and 5E that support storytelling.

There is no one right way to play an RPG. You'll never get everyone to roleplay at the same level. Some players are less comfortable improving than others. Some may be worried that they will "do it wrong." Others just haven't come up with an idea they think is useful. Encourage, model, but don't force.